Notes from the Director

It has been another busy year at the Kelsey, with new projects underway,
others in progress, and still others nearing completion. We all anticipate
with great excitement the opening of Elaine Gazda's show featuring Maria
Barosso's watercolor renditions of the famous frescoes from the Villa of
the Mysteries at Pompeii (story). The conservation
and preparation of the watercolors for exhibition is a work of art itself,
and our visiting conservator Brook Bowman has been devising ingenious ways
to accommodate the work on the watercolors in the cramped quarters of our
study collections area (story).

Robin Meador-Woodruff's exhibit on the panoramic photographs of George
Swain went up to great acclaim in early January and will remain on display
through July 2. I urge any of you who have not had a chance to visit this
exhibit yet to come by before it closes. It is well worth the visit. Other
public projects this winter included two very successful family days organized
by Todd Gerring and Laurie Talalay in which dozens of schoolchildren were
introduced to the mysteries of mummy making.

On the fieldwork front, Janet Richards' work in the Old Kingdom cemetery
at Abydos provided exciting information about a well-known historical figure
of the 6th Dynasty, Weni the Elder, governor of Upper Egypt and owner of
one of the longest autobiographical inscriptions of the period (story). My own project at Kedesh will be returning to
the field this May. I will be able to report more to you in the fall Newsletter
on the unique archive of Hellenistic seals that we just began to uncover
at the end of last season.

This spring saw the publication of volume 12 of the Bulletin of the Museums
of Art and Archaeology, which was entirely dedicated to the Kelsey, containing
articles by curators and students on diverse elements of the Museum's collections-from
Mesopotamian seals to Islamic glass. The Bulletin issue, like the panoramic
installation and parts of the upcoming Villa of the Mysteries exhibition,
is a wonderful showcase of the Kelsey's hidden treasures.